Action sought against UP rural engineering officials

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Last Updated: Wed, Dec 05, 2012 16:10 hrs

Lucknow, Dec 5 (IANS) An activist in Uttar Pradesh has sought registration of a first information report against officials of Rural Engineering Department over regularities pointed out by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG).

In her application at a police station here, Nutan Thakur said the official auditor CAG's report on the department's working from 2007-12 presented anomalies in the category of criminal offence.

She said the CAG verified 25 percent of the work and found an irregularities of over Rs.1,401 crore.

Talking to IANS, Thakur alleged that while police had accepted her application, they refused to give her a receipt.

She would now approach the Lucknow senior superintendent of police to get the case registered.

According to the CAG report, Thakur said, all standards, rules and regulations were flouted leading to financial irregularities resulting in heavy loss to the government exchequer.

For instance, as per the government's guidelines, an administrative sanction is given first followed by financial and technical sanctions, said Thakur's complaint.

The department gave technical sanction in 1,098 cases worth Rs.298.07 crore before the administrative saction. In many cases, contractors were appointed and rates fixed before any process was initiated and later on, sanctions were given through back-dating, it said, citing the CAG report.

In a central rural road laying scheme, it was necessary to make the the department the project implementing unit (PIU) but in case of 47 road projects worth Rs.131.91 crore, outside organisations were made PIUs, it added.

Similarly, against the government rules of not giving any financial power to 'prabhari' (ad hoc) employees, many such people were granted financial powers, it said, adding that in most cases, tender rules were also flouted.

Similarly 3,090 contracts worth Rs.671.35 crore were allotted

through single-window system, which was against the rules, the complaint said.